Life's perspective from an incredibly cynical and jaded Australian man.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

EVE can be win, even if you lose

If you know this game you're bound to have a strong opinion.

For those that don't, it makes you a believer or a sinner or whatever you want to be.

There is a misconception that it requires alot of learning to understand and play which isn't strictly true, it works best with a certain personality type. The kind that has little imagination, dislikes asymmetry and revels in efficiency.
These people are also great orchestral musicians, not writers of the music but the repeaters of perfection. We don't care how patronizing we sound as long as what are are saying, is correct.
So back to the point: EVE Online.

Yeah this is pretty much what EVE combat is like. They have no server 'shards' or split realms or any other load balancing things in place. Everyone is on the one super computer server. This is a major selling point for eve.. to bad they forgot that if they let everyone play at the same time in the same place - they would.

However something must be said for the tactics you can employ in larger fleets.. with the hundred man fleet I was in yesterday for example. All of us were forming together on whats called a POS - Player Owned Structure. It's basically just a long stick surrounded by a big shield with the shield surrounded by guns and other forms of hurt. They require the correct password to enter the shields - something that will come into play in the fleet I was in.

We were jumped by a Titan Bridge into another system with another of our POS - this one we were here to defend. Unfortunately for us the enemy was waiting with double our numbers. They had deployed a large number of warp disruption bubbles - look and do exactly what they are named - around the POS shields to prevent out escape.
So we were stuck inside this 'rape cage' with no way out - other than getting smashed. Also we had a time limit - without getting into specifics the shield on the POS was coming down in exactly 2 hours. So someone on the voice comms suggested we change the password for the POS shields we were in.

This would have a massive effect. If we closed in on the tower then as soon as the password we were using was revoked we would be kicked out of the shields at incredible speed. The enemy would have to struggle to track us and lock us down before alot of us escaped so thats exactly what we did. And it worked like a charm.

Even though we had to retreat and suffered some losses we managed to save quite a bit more than the enemy wanted us to which ticked them off.

In conclusion even though things in this game appeared rigid and inflexible it's nice to see some strategic thinking once and awhile.